April 3, 2017

The New Plot’s Here! The New Plot’s Here!

It’s spring time and Gil Thorp followers’ fancy turns to…high school journalism. We haven’t had a story involving the Milford Trumpet in a while. I guess Mr. Koteskey has moved on and now would be Woodwards and Bernsteins are being guided by Ms. Rizk. They really take journalism seriously these days at the Trumpet! Accessing public records through Freedom Of Information Act requests? That’s some hardcore reportage. I think our new protagonist, Dafne (yeah, Dafne) is poised to take the media world by storm.

Now Dafne is off for an appointment with Mimi Thorp. Is it an interview for the paper? What is Mimi hiding and how far will Dafne go to find out? Maybe Dafne just needs to jot down the names of the Milford softball team’s starters as Mimi rattles them off. That’s real journalism!

The Mudlarks miss the playdowns for 4th consecutive year. They have not won a playdown game in 11 seasons, when the beat Ted Pearse-taunting North Bend before losing to Waltrip. Nevertheless, basketball remains Gil’s best sport, with an overall record of 739-309 with 8 unknowns (minus the years from 1996-2001) and 8 state championships. Since the 2001-2002 season, Gil’s record is 150-54 with 8 unknowns (76-39 with 2 unknowns in the Valley Conference) and 12-4 with 1 state championship (2001-2002) in 5 playdown appearances.

The team has not faced Valley Conference foe New Thayer since 2013-2014, but played every other Valley Conference team this season, some of them twice. It is possible that New Thayer was the unknown opponent seen in the middle of conference play. It could reasonably be assumed that the 3 unknown outcome games this season were Milford wins, but Milford Mudlark Record Book.xlsx will only record results that are explicitly given in the strip.

No Lady Mudlark basketball action this year, the first time that has happened since the 2003-2004 season. Mimi Thorp remains 71-31 with 5 unknowns (34-17 with 2 unknowns in the Valley Conference) and 2-3 in 3 playdown appearances. It was especially curious to see no girl’s basketball season as the squad made the playdowns last year, losing only their post-season matchup against Parkland.

A total of 24 named characters appeared during this basketball season, topping the 17 that appeared last season. The Aagards are probably the only (borderline) hall of name candidates, but a special mention should go to Aaron’s pushover 4th period teacher Mr. Harrison for looking kind of like Walter White. This season is also notable for the first appearance of Kaz’s main squeeze, Kelly Krystek, since the 2013-2014 basketball season.

By my count, the winter story line ran 16 weeks. The “Aaron is inconsistent” problem appeared in the first week, but never found a way to engage readers. We were in week 4 when we hit the “taking Molly” diversion, resolved in week 6. Granger and Brown began their amateur detective routine the next week, which occupied space for about five weeks. AaAa’s confession to Gil in week 12 was essentially unprovoked by anything anyone had done up to that point.
That’s 45 panels (I’m ignoring the Christmas Day installment). I did not count the wasted panels.

Oh, this should be interesting. Thanks to some clever maneuvering from the Scrabble board, Ms. Rizk arises out of the ashes. She and Aardvark come from the same cloth. Then a fist pump to Chrissie Hynde’s granddaughter and we’re off to the races. Will Dafne take the road less traveled and rise above the Augean Stables or will she tunnel into the ground to get at the heart of the matter? Mimi and Gil have seen both sides and soldier onward, no matter the level of doo-doo being slung. Can Dafne fill Marty Moon’s shoes or Marjie Ducey’s high heels? Will baseball and softball coexist for that matter? Dafne has her work cut out for her.